It was then a long dreary march to the camping-ground of
Tsala, where the Chang-pas spend the four summer months; the guides
and baggage animals lost the way and did not appear until the next
day, and in consequence the servants slept unsheltered in the snow.
News travels as if by magic in desert places. Towards evening, while
riding by a stream up a long and tedious valley, I saw a number of
moving specks on the crest of a hill, and down came a surge of
horsemen riding furiously. Just as they threatened to sweep Gyalpo
away, they threw their horses on their haunches, in one moment were
on the ground, which they touched with their foreheads, presented me
with a plate of apricots, and the next vaulted into their saddles,
and dashing up the valley were soon out of sight. In another half-
hour there was a second wild rush of horsemen, the headman
dismounted, threw himself on his face, kissed my hand, vaulted into
the saddle, and then led a swirl of his tribesmen at a gallop in
ever-narrowing circles round me till they subsided into the decorum
of an escort. An elevated plateau with some vegetation on it, a row
of forty tents, 'black' but not 'comely,' a bright rapid river, wild
hills, long lines of white sheep converging towards the camp, yaks
rampaging down the hillsides, men running to meet us, and women and
children in the distance were singularly idealised in the golden glow
of a cool, moist evening.
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